May 2013

From Carmen
Miranda’s playful intensity in the 1940s and 50s and Astrud Gilberto’s sultry
alto in the 1960s to today’s multi-talented young generation, the voices of
Brazilian women have long shaped popular song worldwide. Through classic samba
and bossa nova, female Brazilian vocalists have won a place in
hearts across the planet.

Women
of Brazil chronicles the rising stars and
established voices of a scene as prolific as it is innovative, from
philosophical sambas (Aline Morales’s “Pra Que Sambar”) to gentle
electronic sounds, from the sway of bossa nova (Clara Moreno’s
“Balanço Zona Sul”) to reggae vibes (Flavio Coehlo’s “A Foto”). The
musicians featured on this album take the music of greats like Caetano Veloso
and Jorge Ben, and create their own unique interpretations—or craft clever new
songs, often with a wink to the classic Brazilian songbook.

“Part of the
joy in Brazilian music is this ability to combine that sultry air with great
melodies and intelligent lyrics,” reflects Putumayo’s founder and CEO Dan
Storper, who faced the daunting task of picking tracks out of Brazil’s
burgeoning contemporary music scene. To chronicle this scene further, Putumayo
is releasing two updated versions of its successful collections of Brazilian
music (Brazilian Lounge and Brazilian Beat).

Many of the
young artists on Woman of Brazil hail from legendary musical families,
like velvet-voiced Mart’nália (“Pára Comigo,” a breathy, jazz-inflected
track) or Clara Moreno (daughter of respected singer Joyce). They come
from Italy (Nossa Alma Canta) and Sweden (Miriam Aïda), from
Brazil’s lesser-known rural regions (Maguinha was born in landlocked Goiás) and
its major cities, Rio and Sao Paolo. They are veteran performers (Miriam
Maria), internationally recognized artists (Luísa Maita), and names
utterly new to most listeners outside Brazil (Graça Cunha).

“There’s
this seductive, sensual sound, reflecting the beautiful melodies, thoughtful
lyrics and unique perspectives of these performers that unites them,” explains
Storper. “They all manage to make great music paired with exceptional lyrics,
words that are not just about love, lust and loss, but often about something
deeper.”

Oliver Mtukudzi,
affectionately called “Tuku” by fans worldwide, has weathered storms
with his sharp observations and gracious emphasis on the basic human
experiences that unite us all: childhood and aging, respect and hope,
women’s rights and AIDS, community and connection.

“My music and art come from the everyday living I do,” Mtukudzi
reflects. “I write what I see around me. When I see something, I have
something real to talk about. If there is something to talk about,
there’s something to sing about, and there’s always something new to
talk about.”

Tuku’s latest album Sarawoga
proves that the venerable artist still has plenty to say. With a career
that spans the birth of his native Zimbabwe and the advent of both
Afropop and the global love affair with African roots music, Tuku’s
quicksilver guitar work, keen ear for melody, and evocative voice have
earned him intense adulation at home. His organic, savvy mix of
traditional ways, pan-African influences, and cosmopolitan pop forms
became widely known as Tuku Music. It has made Tuku a household name
across Southern Africa, as well as across Europe and North America,
thanks in part to major releases of his work in the 1990s and 2000s.

Revered as both accomplished musician and public figure, Tuku has
explored a variety of media over his long, successful career: launched a
popular local arts center, mentored countless local musicians, produced
musicals, made films, and spoken out in a soft but persuasive way on
key issues in Zimbabwean and African society.

Born into a family of modest means but great musical spirit, Tuku
grew up singing with his parents and siblings in a rough-edged
neighborhood in Harare, in what was still Rhodesia, a colony dominated
by a ruling European minority. “I left school and for three years, I
couldn’t find a job. I was one of the few guys among my peers with a
fine secondary education,” Tuku recalls. “But I couldn’t get a job
because I was black.”

Tuku found unique ways to address and combat oppression. As a young
performer in his early twenties, he and his colleagues began confronting
the regime through music. He cut his first successful single in 1975
and performed with another of Zimbabwe’s favorite musical sons, Thomas
Mapfumo, as part of the legendary Wagon Wheels. Forerunners of the
Afropop revolution, the band put an electric spin on long-standing
traditions, in songs inspired, among other subjects, by their country’s
recent war of liberation from colonial oppression.

“Before independence in 1980, it was the fight against the Rhodesian
regime. My music then spoke against oppression and the repressive regime
and how we were suffering at the hands of the regime,” Tuku remembers.
“My music then helped people identify themselves…who we were and what we
wanted to be.”

Though his early work fell squarely into the burgeoning rock- and
funk-inspired Afropop of the era, Tuku always felt it as a continuation
of older, deeper roots. “Even when I played with electric equipment, I
always adapted older tunes,” explains Tuku. “I played guitar like I was
playing a traditional instrument.”

After striking out on his own from the Wagon Wheels and recruiting
his own band of stylish young performers, The Black Seeds, Tuku
experienced the ups and downs that mark the careers of many seasoned
musicians. He collaborated with dozens of Zimbabwean talents, worked
with South African producers and musicians (including members of the
Southern African super group Mahube he helped found), and organically
blended musical directions from across Southern Africa.

Yet in one of his most significant creative moves, Tuku eventually
turned back to his musical foundation, to traditional sounds, stunning
the Zimbabwean scene by playing pop on traditional instruments like mbira
(thumb piano) and marimba, alongside his trademark acoustic guitar.
“People didn’t think you could have traditional instruments play like an
organ or synth,” he notes. “But you can find that sound in a
traditional instrument.”

Tuku went about reframing and refining these sounds to make a very
clear and passionate point. He hoped to find a new place in the musical
culture for these vital, older instruments. “I realized that our
youngsters were thinking that these instruments were the worst and were
looking down on them. But the pop songs everyone was listening to
sounded just as good on traditional instruments,” recounts Tuku. “So I
did three albums playing all songs that way, on traditional instruments,
to prove the point that our instruments aren’t inferior and our young
people shouldn’t feel inferior, either.”

Tuku’s message—from his first songs protesting colonial injustice to
his latest compositions calling for respect and kindness—has always been
woven from metaphor. Favoring imagery and small snapshots to sweeping
political statements, Tuku sees his lyrics as springing from a deep well
of vivid metaphor found in Shona, the majority vernacular language of
Zimbabwe, just as his music finds its beginnings in traditional sounds.
This more literary approach to expression not only had its aesthetic
advantages, but embraces the full ambiguity and complexity of life.

“The metaphorical possibilities are part the beauty of my language,”
Tuku muses. “It is not only the most beautiful but the best way to
express many things. It gives a full view of life, lots of life.”

With five dozen albums under his belt, as well as an ongoing
curiosity to explore other media (film, theater) and work with young,
aspiring artists, Tuku has kept his passion for musical creativity, even
after nearly five decades of work. Still savoring tours and life on the
road, Tuku says, “You get to a place and even if you’ve been waiting
and travelling, you find something else, something fresh, there. It’s
something new and it’s wonderful.”

Now accompanied by a mixed ensemble of young and veteran musicians,
Tuku constantly explores subtle new ways of drawing his listeners into
greater thoughtfulness, of expressing the universal in life’s little
things.

“One of the songs on this album”—Tuku’s 61st—“is a welcome
song,” he says with a smile. “It’s a song that welcomes everybody,
including the oppressor, because welcome has got no boundaries.” Much
like Tuku music itself.

It’s Carnival in Recife. It’s Mardi Gras
in New Orleans.
And watch out: That just may be the Devil spinning through the drunken, dancing
crowd, trying to get friendly with the saint in disguise, with the diamond in the
rough. The rolling drums and quicksilver accordion licks, the earthy vibe and
thoughtful reflections mingle on Matuto’s latest refinement of their
Appalachia-gone-Afro-Brazilian sound, The Devil and The Diamond.

“The devil is what’s
keeping us from our best selves, which is the diamond we have the potential to
become,” Ross explains, spinning the narrative thread that ties the album’s
pieces together. “That dichotomy, that tension exists in all of us. In a loose
way, this album outlines the journey we take, when we wrestle with the devil
and find the diamond.”

What wide-ranging Americana
and jazz guitarist Clay Ross and accordionist Rob Curto, one of the movers
behind New York’s Forró For All (when not touring with folks like Lila Downs
and David Krakauer) began as a curious exploration of their shared musical
loves, Matuto (a Northeastern Brazilian slang term for “bumpkin”) has blossomed
into a platform for expressing broad truths, ideas inspired by Buddhist sutras,
personal epiphanies, and the musicians’ down-home upbringings. It felt like the
perfect way to celebrate ten years for Motema, an open-eared and broad-minded
label featuring music that crosses genres and takes listeners on a journey
thanks to stellar musicianship, and wise and intriguing lyrics.

Matuto are part of a
broader, loosely defined movement of hard-to-define acoustic innovators,
musicians savoring their own heritage as they commune across genre and cultural
bounds. Hailing from different parts of the country, Ross and Curto first met
in Brooklyn’s genre-defying music scene. After
laying down tracks on each other’s albums, they headed to Recife together and became fast friends as
they played music, listened to local ensembles, held workshops in favela community
centers, and won over local fans.

Friendship and co-creation
honed the original Matuto idea. They turned what could have been little more
than a wacky side gig into a serious musical venture, in which seemingly
disparate threads and brainstorms are woven together organically. “Our sound
has really gelled,” explains Curto, “and our style had become more codified,
from a musical stand point, especially in the use of the accordion and fiddle.”

Matuto can start with an
unexpected arrangement of an old chestnut like “Wayfaring Stranger” (resulting
in “Diamond”), or with harmonium lines from a jam session with an Indian
vocalist (“Tears”). Inspiration may come from Recife
(“Toca Do Sino”) or from Carolina
childhood horseplay sessions (“Horse Eat Corn”).

But it all comes together,
as far-flung sounds converge in coherent, seamless songs, in music leaping
beyond the fun of fusion, to express a bigger artistic picture, be it a tale of
thwarted desire or the challenge of tussling with inner demons.

“Trimming the fat, that’s
the idea of the record, both lyrically and sonically,” Ross notes. “Musically,
it was more about editing instead of layering, more about things that we took
away, as opposed to things that we added. The last record has this massive
band, whereas we simply use the sound of our six-piece live band this time
around. It gives the songs real continuity, as there’s a similar sonic
palette.”

Ross, whose parents thought
he’d grow up to be a preacher, and Curto found they were both deeply moved by
the practices of Buddhism, in particular the self-observation and compassion
that are cultivated by meditation. Images arising from the Diamond Cutter Sutra
and life lessons gleaned from long sessions sitting in silence guided the shape
of the album.

Yet another current—the
sensual danger and madcap renewal of the pre-Lenten carnival season across the
Americas—sidled up to the songs’ suggested spiritual journey. The juxtaposition
and tensions make instrumentals like “Demon Chopper,” a title suggested by a
high-strung acupuncturist’s announcement of her powers, poignant and catchy at
once, as rippling guitar, fiddle, and accordion solos shine against a backdrop
of earthy Afro-Brazilian beats. “Tears” feels as ear-catching as a
well-crafted, bittersweet pop song, though based on afoxê beats
connected to the Afro-Brazilian religious rituals of candomblé and
powered by modal, distorted blasts of accordion.

The mix of bluegrass and forró,
of Mehta and Mardi Gras, has proven to have real legs, taking the band from
club dates in the Deep South to diplomacy-minded State Department tours across
Eastern Europe and West Africa. A showcase in Copenhagen got the band a gig at one of the most staunchly
traditional festivals in Recife,
the Feast of St. John, Brazil’s biggest forró event. The traditionalists
get it: Matuto has distilled some of the spirit of the music, even as they have
blended it with other sounds, and kept its steamy, sensual dance side intact.

“Matuto does what we do out
of love,” reflects Ross, “and our message is simple: Follow your passion, if it
leads you to Brazil,
or to Cajun, klezmer, or hip hop music, it doesn’t matter. Just follow your
bliss. Follow it and don’t worry.”

“We feel that way playing
music together,” Curto adds. “We can just look at each other and start
laughing. There’s a lot of humor and joy, even in the most serious moments.”